Week 4: Understanding mentoring
Introduction
Welcome to Week 4 of the course.
Last week you focused on rapport-building, listening and questioning – some of the core skills required by mentors and coaches. You also looked at how mentoring and coaching relationships can go wrong.
This week, you’ll focus specifically on mentoring in the workplace.
You’ll explore what it is and why it works, and learn about the different ways in which mentoring can support and enhance an individual’s career.
Now watch the following video to introduce the week.
Download this video clip.Video player: mc_1_week4_intro.mp4
Transcript
NARRATOR
This week, you'll focus on mentoring, which was first described 3,000 years ago in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, where Odysseus places his young son in the care of his trusted companion Mentor when he goes to fight in the Trojan War. You'll explore a variety of mentoring relationships and look at the different phases of the mentoring process, from rapport building and direction setting to winding down and moving on. You will look at the ways in which mentoring can benefit everyone involved. For example, staff morale and job satisfaction are often seen to increase, which is good for the organisation, as well as the mentor and mentee. You'll finish this week by considering some common myths and misconceptions about mentoring, such as thinking that having a mentor to support and develop you will automatically solve all your work related issues, and not realising that you must take action yourself if you really want things to change.
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By the end of this week, you will be able to:
- describe the various phases of a mentoring relationship
- recognise the benefits of mentoring
- identify some of the misconceptions about mentoring.
You’ll start with a brief overview of the history of mentoring.